Poster session on Population ageing and intergenerational relations (1)

This study examined the intergenerational resource allocation by measuring the scale of production and consumption of non-market labor with age as the unit. In addition, this study compared the results with the intergenerational resource allocation of market labor, and analyzed the difference between genders. For the non-market labor, the National Time Transfer Accounts (NTTA) methodology was applied by using the Time Use Survey in 2004.
As a result of analysis, the annual scale of non-market labor accounts for about 40% of market labor, and the scale of consumption by life-cycle remained steadier when considering non-market labor. In addition, the scale of consumption of children was expanded by 67%, and the burden of support of adult parents for their children increased by 52%. In view of the intergenerational resource allocation of non-market labor by gender, men are the net beneficiary of non-market labor regardless of their age, and women are identified to be the net contributor of non-market labor in the prime working ages and elderly.
The finding of this study is as follows. First, women increase the social welfare of household members through non-market labor. Second, this study attempted an empirical analysis on the retirement-consumption puzzle considering the non-market labor.

Over the last few decades, increasing attention has been paid to the issue of well-being among the elderly, and life satisfaction has been used as an indicator to evaluate older people’s life conditions, reflecting multiple and broad domains. This paper sheds some light on this topic with reference to Italy, a country characterized by an increasing ageing population. The aim is to examine life satisfaction among people aged 65 and older and its predictors. We adopt a gender approach to examine whether literature results, which show that elderly men and women have different sources of satisfaction, are confirmed. In doing this, particular attention is given to the role played by the family and its influence on the life satisfaction of older adults. As a Mediterranean country, Italy is assumed to place special importance on these aspects. The data used come from the cross-sectional surveys “Aspects of Daily Life”, carried out in Italy by the National Statistical Institute (ISTAT). As we considered the latest available surveys (2010 and 2011), we can rely on a large sample and, thus, test several hypotheses about the predictors of older adults’ life satisfaction. The results show unexpected patterns in the determinants of life satisfaction for men and women, and do not confirm previous literature.

Demographic and policy change can have an adverse effect on the social care support received by older people, whether through informal, formal state or private sources. This paper analyses the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing data (wave 4) in order to examine the demographic and socio-economic characteristics associated with the receipt of support by older people from different sources. The research findings outline three key results which have significant implications for the organisation of social care for older persons in the future. Firstly, the number of Instrumental Activities of Daily Living (IADLs), followed by the number of Activities of Daily Living (ADLs) are the strongest determinants of receiving support from any source in later life. Secondly, there are significant gender differences in the factors which are associated with the receipt of support from different sources; for example, physical health is a strong determinant of informal support receipt by men, while mental health status is a strong determinant of informal support receipt by women. Finally, different kinds of needs are associated with the receipt of support from different sources, and this ‘link’ raises questions about the manner in which future social care provision should be organised.

It is relatively well-known that discriminatory experiences affect psychological well-being of individuals, but little is known if and how perception of social inequality is associated with individual happiness and life satisfaction. Are people who think that their society is unfair likely to have lower levels of happiness and life satisfaction? If so, is there mediating or moderating effects of individual socio-economic status on the relationship between perceived social inequality and happiness and life satisfaction? This study addresses these questions by analyzing the 2009 Korean General Social Survey (KGSS). Ordered logistic regression analyses show that perceived social inequality decreases individual happiness and life satisfaction. Also, it is detected that its effect is not differential but universal across different socio-economic status groups. This finding implies that social justice as well as individual social economic standing is important for happiness of people in a society.

The paper examines the changes in family structure and care provision for the elderly in Nigeria. Essentially, the family structure is changing from extended nature to nuclear structure, with impact on the wellbeing of the older persons now and into the future. This paper, therefore examine the impact of Changes in family structures on care of the older persons. Data was gathered using questionnaire and multi-stage sampling technique was used to select 250 respondents. Simple percentages cross tabulations and chi-square statistics were used to analyze the data. The results revealed that the changes in family structure are evident and occurred over time and that the quality of care the elderly received has diminished. The change in family structure also influence the patterns of care giving or support to aging parents, in addition the formal institution of care as substitute was disapproved by majority of the respondents. Such changes are due to modernization, industrialization, population explosion, urbanization, globalisation and nuclearization. The study, therefore, recommends that government should initiate policies to reduce the effect of changes in family structure and advises the family on the primacy of their care giving or support function.

Using data from the longitudinal surveys of “Well-being of Elderly in Anhui Province, China” conducted in 2001 and in 2003 respectively, this paper employs the logistic random effects model to examine the gender difference in the effect of adult children’s out-migration on intergenerational support. The results show that while migrant daughters are more likely to increase financial support to their older parents, which narrows the gap between sons and daughters, migrant sons have a lower probability of increasing instrumental support, which also narrows the gender difference in instrumental support. Since migrant daughters have a greater probability of increasing their emotional support of their parents, the gap between sons and daughters in intergenerational emotional support is further widened. Although the division of family support in rural China has not changed completely, differences between sons and daughters in intergenerational support are reduced under the out-migration of adult children.

Living arrangements are vital to intergenerational transfers and welfare in old age, particularly in China which lacks social security system. This study seeks to extend current understanding of the dynamics of living arrangements among older Chinese by exploring two sets of nationally representative survey data that were conducted by the China Research Center on Ageing in 2000 and 2006 respectively, covering 20,000 samples aged 60 and over. The results suggest that living close to children, rather than co-residing with them, has become an important way of providing old-age support. However, such changes in living arrangements do not necessarily constrain intergenerational transfer capacity and make old parents worse-off. Weak evidences have been found that, generally, parents live far from children receive more intergenerational transfers. The family unit and traditional family support in old-age seem likely to continue to be the essential pillars of the old-age security, particularly in rural areas.

This study aims to identify and evaluate the contents of ageism and to develop instrument of ageism. Going further, it intends to utilize these measures for reviewing effect factors of ageism. The current study describes multidimensional view of ageism toward aging and the elderly. After pre-test and review of professionals, 31 items was constructed. Data were obtained from KGSS Survey of 1535 participants. The sample was randomly divided into two groups to test reliability and validity of the scale. Finally, the 23-items with seven factors were suggested, based on the internal reliability and exploratory factor analysis with the first group. Another group was conducted confirmatory factor analysis. The results showed that the final 21-item scale with seven factors had a good model fit. And it explored effect factors of ageism in Korea using 21 measures developed herein. It looked at how ageism was influenced by gender, age, family relationship, educational background, economic activity, health, region, age norm, contacts with the elderly, and degree of happiness on ageism. Women revealed stronger ageism than men, and ageism became weaker in case of better health, greater happiness, and more contact with the elderly.

This paper examines the determinants of chronic health conditions and explains their persistence, using a panel data set from the Indonesian Family Life Survey (IFLS). I incorporate dynamics into a health demand function, finding strong correlations between lagged and current health measures when nothing else is controlled. This could represent the influence of lagged health or fixed unobserved factors such as genetic endowments and childhood health. To disentangle these, I estimate the influence of lagged health by using first-difference two-step generalized method of moments (FD-GMM), where the first-differencing removes fixed unobserved factors and keeps only lagged health. I found that it is this fixed effect, representing both genetic endowments and childhood health, that is most important in explaining later life chronic conditions. The impact of past health conditioning on the fixed effect, captured by the coefficients on lagged health measures, is weak, with estimated coefficients relatively close to zero. These results are robust to potential measurement errors in health and to sample attrition. Socio-economic status also has very little influence on current health, again conditioned on the fixed effect and on the influence of lagged health.